The two key components of dryland gardening are water management and the building of healthy soil. All life depends on the few centimeters of soil lining the earth’s surface; fertile soil supports plant life, and plant life supports animal life.

Here I explain the critter-filled world of soil:

Soil is the living skin of the earth. Fertile soil is composed of an array of substances: minerals, fungi, gels, billions of bacteria reproducing and consuming each other, as well as oxygen, which creates space and builds soil structure. Without proper structure, soil collapses into dust and all the soil critters lose their home… it’s hard to live in the desert. Drylands have lost their fertility and are on their way to becoming deserts, which means dryland gardeners must reintroduce fertility into the soil.

How do they do this? Through composting.

Compost

In nature, leaf litter, twigs, and dead animals all end up on the topmost surface of the ground. Billions and billions of bacteria – the soil life – decompose organic matter and eat it up into the earth.

Composting creates optimal conditions for bacteria to manufacture soil in mass quantities. Jim has shown me that it’s quite easy to create one’s own “soil factory” using very basic materials: a big heap of dry plant material (carbon), the more finely chopped the better; and either fresh green plant material or animal manure (nitrogen), which acts as an activating material. The mixing of carbon and nitrogen in correct proportions (3:1) kicks off a chain reaction: the compost produces heat, killing off weed seeds (you don’t want weed seeds in your rose beds!) and activating a chain reaction of fungal and bacterial activity that decomposes the compost materials, eventually turning them into humus. The resulting soil is soft, crumbly, and filled with tons of hyperactive bacteria. Once the compost is spread on the garden, the bacteria inoculates the existing ground soil, transforming it into a well-structured, biologically potent growing medium, with great water-holding capacity and full of the good nutrients that plants need.

[a good hot heap makes for lots o' steam]

Once you’ve got fertile soil, it will support abundant plant life. You then need to mulch to maintain healthy soil and protect plant roots; I’ll explain mulching in a future post.